Return My Love

Today we celebrate Richard Wagner's 200th birthday with his greatest work:




Ah, such genius.

While posting this I am, of course, wearing my most magical of helmets.

Happy International Dance Day

It just doesn't get any better than this.

Lovely

In the unlikely event you ever doubted it -- Fred Astaire could sing.



This is my favorite version of this song. The man had style.

The Code of the Cowboy

Here's to singing cowboy superstar Gene Autry, who was born 105 years ago today.  Back in his day he was as big a star as ever shown in the west.  Today he's just the kind of hero that we wish we could root for. Gene was always the good guy, and he wrote this, the Code of the Cowboy.  Learn it.  Live it.

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. He must always tell the truth.
4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6. He must help people in distress.
7. He must be a good worker.
8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10. The Cowboy is a patriot.

And to top it off, he stared in my all time favorite serial, The Phantom Empire.  Here's part one:

Someday You'll Find It

Because of the time sucking scourge of the Christmas season I haven't been to the movies in a while, but as soon as the dreadful event was finally over I took myself to the bijou to see The Muppets. And since this is the latest of all late reviews, you probably know that the Muppets are back, baby, and they are good.

This version has everything you want in a Muppet movie: sly self-knowledge that breaks the puppety proscenium, clever little inside jokes that tickle old fans, humor that only an educated grown-up could love as well as lowbrow, kid-friendly fart jokes (oh, how I've missed you my dear Fozzie Bear), toe-tapping, heart-tugging songs, celebrity cameos, good versus evil, hope, love, togetherness, and redemption.

Yeah, that seems a lot from a pile of felt, but that's what always made the Muppets so special. They made you believe in all that stuff.

It's been a few years since the Muppets were anything but a corporate trademark. I didn't think there was anybody in Hollywood who could re-capture that magic. But then I had never heard of Jason Segal. Shame on me. This guy seems to have brought our heroes back to life almost as a singular act of will and belief. Which is, essentially, the plot of the movie. The Muppets have to get back together, after all these years, believe in themselves again, and put on one more big show or they'll lose everything to the latest silly bad-guy, a rich man who is so aware of his role as the villain he sometimes orders his henchmen to back him up on maniacal laughs.

The story involves Segal, as Gary, and his brother Walter. Walter just happens to be made out of felt and is a huge fan of the Muppets. I think you can see where this is going. Anyway, the gang gets back together, a show is made, there are some original songs, including “Am I a Man or Am I a Muppet,” which includes the best celebrity cameo in all of muppetdom, and that's saying a lot. There are some good old songs, including my favorite, “Rainbow Connection,” done as a duet with Kermit and Piggy. Now I'm not Miss Piggy's biggest fan, but she's handled so well here that I found both the duet and the romance to be genuinely touching (but then I'm something of a sap).

So, bottom line here. If you are a fan of the old Muppet Show and the old Muppet Movie and were touched by the magic then, you really should see this. And take a kid, if you have one to take. They'll like it too.

As the Blogoshere Turns

I really don't like Jar Jar Binks and I've never seen the appeal of cartoons designed to look like Legos, so it's saying something that the Video O' the Week is a Lego cartoon featuring Jar Jar Binks.  It's another great post on Electronic Cerebrectomy.

Shine On Harvest Moon

Stan and Babe in a tribute to tonight's Harvest Moon.

What Happens in Jellystone Stays in Jellystone

Um . . . wow.  Well, as long as they're happy, I guess.

You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll Kiss Your Childhood Goodbye

Toy Story 3. You don't need me to tell you how good it is. Big time movie critics are calling it a masterpiece. That guy down at the store said he's already seen it twice. And a bunch of people you follow in Twitter said that they cried at the ending. So if you haven't seen it yet, you should go already.

And you probably already know why it is so good. It's not just the animation, which is dazzling. It's the well written characters and story. It doesn't take long before these cartoon toys are people you know and care about. There's adventure, there's comedy, there's good guys, bad guys, character development, joy, sadness, and redemption. Yeah, all that in a cartoon about toys.

It shouldn't be too much of a surprise. This is Pixar after all. But what's all this about grown-up people crying at the end? What's with all the men pretending they've got something in their eye? Well, not to give anything away, but what the grown-ups are weeping for is the passing of their own childhood and for the memory of that passage to adulthood. It is hard, after all, to put away our childish things.

Sometimes it is good to revisit them. Thank you Pixar. It's nice to be reminded.

Oh, by the way, I happened to see it in 3-D. I have no idea why it was produced in this format. The animators didn't use the capabilities of the process at all. See it in 2-D. It's just as good and you won't have to wear the funny glasses.

As the Blogoshere Turns Episode 2

Our Post O' the Week come from Oz and Ends. It points out what happens when the mainstream media tries to cover science, and highlights the perfidy of a big drug company. All that and it's about my all-time favorite disease, diabetes!

Our Movie Review O' the Week comes from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness. It's about Batman, which is plenty cool for me

Our Video O' the Week also comes from the Cave of Cool. It's called Key Lime Pie and you've just got to see it.

(edit: link fixed)

Happy Trails

There is something sad about the upcoming auction of Roy Rogers' stuff at Christie's. It seems to mark the final passing of a particular type of Americana, the singing cowboy. Seeing old Trigger, Buttermilk, and Bullet on the auction block is just plain wrong. They should be in the Smithsonian.


Action!  Thrills!  Adventure!  Romance!  Singing!  What's not to love?

Roy and Gene Autry and Tex Ritter and a whole bunkhouse full of minor players rode off into the sunset a long time ago. The place they made in American pop-cultural history should be remembered and honored. I'm glad that Roy's old group, the Sons of the Pioneers, still performs regularly, as do such fun western swing acts as Riders in the Sky. It's nostalgia, it's hokey, it's cornball, but I'm mighty glad that someone is keeping those campfire embers glowing.

Well Done, Mr Nimoy

After six decades, Leonard Nimoy has decided to retire from the acting profession. He will be officially finished after today's final trip to Vulcan (really, that's where he is today). A veteran of stage (my parents once saw him as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) and screen (big and small), he did voice-overs, directed, wrote, and, of course, sang. I will miss seeing him work, but if he feels it's time to rest, you can't say he hasn't earned it. Of Mr Nimoy I will say this – I am, and always will be, his fan.

Sign My Petition

I have created an online petition. This is a matter of great importance and I do hope you will help me reach the goal of half a million signatures. Here is the message that we need to give to the studios, loud and clear:

Whereas the major studios have told us that movies are better in 3-D, and whereas My Dinner With Andre is a fine film made with the outdated technology of its time, and whereas it would surely be better fully realized in 3-D, we, the undersigned, request and demand that Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn recreate their roles and remake My Dinner With Andre using today's 3-D process so that we can finally see this movie as it was obviously meant to be seen.

Right then, who's with me?

Avatar

I finally got around to seeing Avatar. It was more than I expected and less than I wanted.

I knew that the visual effects were going to be good. What I didn't expect was how rich and layered they would be. Cameron has created one of the most visually appealing alien worlds to ever appear on the screen. The depth and detail of the forest is astounding. From the plants and flying insects in the foreground to complex tangle of life in the background, Pandora is a stunningly beautiful place. The Na'vi, the people who live in this forest world, are themselves beautiful. This is a motion picture worth watching just for the moving pictures. If you do go and see it I'd suggest watching the 3-D version. This was made to be seen in 3-D.

There has been a bit of controversy about 3-D lately. Avarar's box office success seems to have convinced Warner Brothers that they need to make all their future big movies in 3-D. A lot of people are asking why. Most movies, even most action movies, won't really be any better in 3-D. Good old 2-D is just fine. It is only movies like this that are built around their visual element and are designed with the process in mind that are worth the extra expense and the bother of wearing funny glasses. The push to create more movies using this technology is fairly senseless.

So the visuals are stunning. What of the plot, the characters, the story?

Well, that's the “less than I wanted” part. The plot is predictable, cliched, and somewhat hackneyed. While the visuals were fully realized, the characters were not.

Mankind is on the planet Pandora to mine the place of that most valuable of all precious MacGuffins, unobtainium. Yes, they really did call it that. I took it as a signal that we weren't to look too closely at the plot. It didn't matter what was being mined, it was something that they had and we wanted.

The mining company has two groups of non-miners with them; scientists and soldiers. The soldiers are there to keep the native population from disturbing the mining operation. The scientists are there to study that same population and to try to convince them to get out of the way.

The soldiers do their job with guns and bombs. The scientists use “avatars” to better communicate with the Na'vi. Avatars are artificially created Na'vi bodies that the scientists download their consciousnesses into. Our hero in this story is a former soldier who is working for the scientists. As he learns more about the Na'vi and grows closer to them, he begins to see who are the good guys and who are the bad.

The plot of good guy tree hugging primitive aliens versus evil, exploitative humans was very familiar. I rather liked it when Ursula K Le Guin wrote it in more than thirty years ago in The World For World Is Forest. That too featured mystical elements and a native revolution against the human baddies.

This is the fantasy re-telling of way too much human history. It is the story of the Americans and the American Indians. It is the story of the Belgians and the Congolese, the Australians and the Aborigines, and the British and just about everyone. It is a story that is worth telling. Science fiction can be used to tell these stories in a way that reveals truths by looking at them in a new way. That's not what happened here.

As an action movie this was a lot of fun. As a love story it was quite pleasant. It was great to watch but it didn't present all that much to think about. Fine. Watch it anyway. It's worth seeing, but probably only once.

Burked

I've just read that Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are currently shooting a movie to be called Burke and Hare. Directed by John Landis, it features Tim Curry and John Cleese. Yup, it's a comedy. Is it in good taste to make a comedy of England's most infamous case of grave robbery and murder? No, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

Glenn's Book of Quotes, Number Eleven

“Ninety percent of everything is crud.” – Theodore Sturgeon

This is usually referred to as Sturgeon's Law, but Sturgeon himself liked to call it Sturgeon's Revelation. Either way, it is a good thing to bear in mind.

I hear people say things like “all television is junk,” and I know it is just not so. I do know that most of it is junk. It all comes at you in an undifferentiated mess at the touch of a button. Flip through the channels and you could be forgiven for thinking that TV is a pastime for morons. You know it's not. It just takes some effort to find the good stuff.

I hear people say “turn off that useless TV and read a book.” Well, that's not a bad idea, but which book? This comes to a surprise to some people, but ninety percent of books are crud too. Believe me, I used to be a bookseller. The publishing world is hip-deep in crud. The bestseller list is mostly crud. There's a ton of crud in the mid-list. Thousands of new ISBNs are assigned every year. That's a lot of crud.

I'm talking about everything here. All fields of human endeavor. Art, architecture, the web, cars, cities, sports, science, religion, radio, business, politics, music, movies, you name it, mostly crud. Why not? We made it. What we make, and our judgments about it are, well . . .

We celebrate our great artists, creators, and dreamers, for beating the rule, for showing us truth and beauty amidst the dross. We also celebrate people who have created nothing of value and achieved nothing but their own celebrity. In fact, ninety percent of celebrities – you get the point.

This could sound like a pessimistic philosophy. It's not. It is essentially optimistic. After all, if ninety percent of everything is crud, then ten percent is the good stuff. Sometimes it takes work to find the good stuff, but it has to be there. I'm like the optimistic little boy who was given a pile of dung as a birthday present. He was last seen happily shoveling away, saying “there has to be a pony in here somewhere.”

That's the trick; find the pony.

An Aging Trekkie Goes to the Movies

I was, I believe I may have mentioned, a bit nervous about this new Star Trek movie. What's all this stuff about a reboot? What will they do with my beloved characters? Will they throw out all that lovely future history? Will they do it right? What I guess I meant is, will I like it?

I liked it. I really liked it. I mean, I'm surprised by how much I liked it. I think I was a little stunned.

In fact it's taken me a long time to figure out what I have to say about it, other than what I just said. I want to see it again. It's been years since I've gone to the same movie twice during its first run. That's kid stuff and I'm not a kid anymore.

Neither is Star Trek. It's forty years old. But now it's young again.

If you've read this far you probably already know the premise. Bad guy goes back in time, does something to mess up the past, changes the origin of the Star Trek saga, the whole story starts anew, with some things remaining the same and some changed forever. What made Star Trek special for me was the characters. Would this new reality get them right? Would they be, even if somewhat changed, essentially the same people?

My answer it yes. J.J. Abrams and his crew got it right. They got the big things right. They got the small things right. Sulu's unflappability, Chekov's youthful energy, Scotty's humor and style, Uhuru's strength and skill, McCoy's passion, Spock's subtle interior battle between logic and friendship, and Kirk's, well, Kirkness. Oh yes, Kirk is still da man.

There are some big changes. I don't do spoilers, so I won't talk about them here, but some things have changed. Conservative old trekkie me should have bristled, or at least been disappointed. It didn't happen. Not much, anyway. I accepted the changes as parts of the new milieu and as a device for future stories.

There were a lot of little gifts for fans. A well known trilling sound in the base on Delta Vega. The name Delta Vega. Kirk's wandering eyes (and making it with a green chick). Classic lines from the old show that brought laughter and shouts of recognition from fans in the audience. The optimistic spirit of the whole thing, defying the no-win scenario. Best of all, there was Nimoy.

Nimoy did a great job (of course) as good old Spock Prime. He passed the torch to this new version with great respect for the old. I can't wait to see the next one.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Star Trek lives.

Live long and prosper.

Wallace and Gromit

We've been watching Nick Park movies at our little cinema lately. We started with Chicken Run, moved on to Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, then went back to see A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out. Cracking good stuff.

Chicken Run was great, of course, charming and very funny. I loved all the movie references. But I was really looking forward to seeing Wallace and Gromit again. I love those guys. Wallace's mad inventions, his child-like enthusiasm, his very Englishness, are all irresistible. And Gromit is just wonderful. I'm probably not the first person to think that he is Buster Keaton, reincarnated as a plasticine dog. He's the best silent clown since the 20s. Which is saying a lot for what is really just a bit of clay, but his animators have given him such a wonderfully expressive face that you can't help but feel for the little fellow.

The problem is that these movies always make me a bit, er, peckish. Cheddar? A nice bit of Gorgonzola? Ah, that's it. Wensleydale.

I Watch the Watchmen

I read Watchmen when it first came out as a 12 issue comic book series, way too many years ago. I remember talking to a fellow comics geek at the time about whether it would make a good movie. He thought it would be great. I wasn't so sanguine. For one thing the story is too rich, the plot too dense for movies. It would have to be cut down or it would be five or six hours long. The problem is that if you cut it down you cut out what makes it great.

The big problem though is that Watchmen is a work of metafiction. It is a comic book about comic books. Alan Moore took the superhero genre apart, found out what made it tick, and put it back together. What, Moore asked, would it really be like? What sort of person would dress up in a costume and fight crime? Why would they do it? What would it do to them? And how would it change the world?

Watchmen changed the genre forever. After that book no one could look at comics the same way again. The characters were real, troubled, flawed human beings living in a real, violent, and terrifying world. In their wake four-color heroes motivated only by goodness and niceness seemed hopelessly quaint.

As this new movie got closer to completion I heard people making a new argument. They said that comics were now part of the mainstream. Movies and TV are now so heavily influenced by comics that a movie that was a commentary on these themes would have a resonance that it would not have had just a few years ago. I thought that might just be so. Maybe Watchmen was filmable after all. I certainly wanted to believe it.

I've just seen the movie, and I'm afraid I was right all along. You just can't make a movie that does the comic justice. Watchmen was a great book. It blew my mind. Watchmen was a pretty good movie. It entertained me.

As a fan of the book it was fun to see the characters come to life. As a fan of the genre it was fun to see a thrilling superhero action movie. Fun, certainly, but it doesn't hold up to the original.

As predicted, there was way too much stuff to fit in. Cuts had to be made and things that were important to understanding the plot and the fictional world got mentioned quickly, in passing, in the hopes that audiences would keep up. I'm not sure if people who hadn't done their reading assignments could follow along. Those important plot points had to get shoved aside for extended action sequences. Motion pictures, after all, require motion.

They got a lot of things right. I liked the look of the movie. I think the characters were spot on. But so much of the book was about the psychology of the characters, and while the filmmakers tried, it just wasn't possible to paint as rich a portrait as was necessary. They came a lot closer than I thought they would, but not quite.

So yeah, it's a good movie. If you like superhero flicks you shouldn't miss it. It's just not going to change the world. Which is kind of a shame, considering the source material, but not really a surprise.

Have Fun Storming the Castle

After all these years I finally got around to watching The Princess Bride. I know, I know, what took me so long? Man, was this a great movie. You've probably seen it, so I don't need to tell you that. If you haven't seen it, then what are you waiting for? Only a dope would go a couple of decades without seeing such a terrific movie. It is really amazing how it works as a swashbuckling, romantic, fairytale, and at the same time manages to be a parody of a swashbuckling, romantic, fairytale. Now excuse me. I've got a BMT sandwich waiting.